


Also Ran

by Fox



Category: Chariots of Fire
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox/pseuds/Fox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To H----:<br/>Thy Friendship oft has made my heart to ache<br/>Do be my Enemy for Friendship's sake.</p><p>-- William Blake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Also Ran

**Author's Note:**

> I am not now, nor have I ever been, Hugh Hudson, Colin Welland, or any of the characters whose names appear here and in their film.
> 
> Written for Peak in Darien for Yuletide 2005. Thanks to cmshaw, Ellen Fremedon, tangleofthorns, corvidae9, and Beth H for beta.

'Andy,' Sybil is saying, 'I'm losing him. He says he needs to clear his mind of me.' She looks across the lawn from under the dramatic brim of her hat and sighs, and Lindsay wonders how often she is allowed to let people see it when she's genuinely unhappy. 'He can't love me and say that.'

He talks her patiently through the really unspeakable pressure old Harold is feeling, and somehow manages to do it without letting his own troubles muck the whole thing up. Because of course Syb will lose Harold if Harold loses in Paris; but Lindsay is bound to lose Harold no matter what, so it's a bit of a job staying cheerful about it. At the end of the day, he wants Harold to be happy, and Sybil makes him happy, so that's that -- but it's dashed difficult not to resent her for it. The only way he manages it is by making sure she has no idea what she's won, so she never has the least chance to be smug about it.

* * *

* * *

Lindsay remembers vividly; not exactly as if it had proverbially happened yesterday, but nevertheless, quite as if a bit less than four years -- and a half! -- had passed.

October the something-or-other, just before the proper start of Michaelmas term, 1919, and he'd stayed for breakfast with whatshisname, the third year reading Literature who'd asked him round after dinner. Rather a good start to the term, actually, all things considered. And while the eggs were boiling, whatshisname -- what _was_ his name? Willis? Wilson? Watson? -- said, 'Seems there's been a challenge for the College Dash.'

Lindsay lit a cigarette as whatshisname poured the tea. 'For the what?'

'It's a sort of race. Against the clock, you know. All the way round the court in twenty seconds --'

'What!'

'-- or however long it takes the clock to strike twelve. Bit silly, really. But I suppose if one runs one has to give it a try.'

Lindsay remembers that he affected just the merest hint of a pout. 'I run.'

'Do you,' whatshis -- Walton! 'Do you,' Walton said, smiling and pulling Lindsay toward him. 'Perhaps you should challenge as well. Give this Abrahams a run for his money.'

Hang on -- 'Hang on, Abrahams?'

'Mmm.'

Lindsay pulled back for a moment. 'Harold Abrahams? Old Reptonian?'

'I dunno. Sounds right.' Walton leaned precariously away long enough to switch off the ring under the eggs. 'Know him?'

'Not well. I'd no idea he ran.' Lindsay thought for a moment. 'Perhaps I shall go and challenge him --'

'Excellent.' Walton grinned. 'Good job it's not for a few hours, though, what?'

Walton had awfully good hands, for such a bookish sort.

  
Three and a half hours later, Harold made the College Dash, the first man in hundreds of years to do so. Beat Lindsay by about half a step, incidentally. And he was borne up on the shoulders of the crowd, and Lindsay passed him the bottle of champagne; and in those few minutes, watching him accept dozens of congratulations, Lindsay could tell from Harold's beaming face that he'd just proven -- something. Nobody was ever that happy just to have run fast.

* * *

It was toward the end of that first term that Harold got a bit blotto on hall wine one night and Lindsay had to more or less steer him back to his room while Monty and Stallard kept a lookout and stood ready to divert inquisitive dons if necessary. Harold wasn't in such bad shape that he needed to be put to bed and fed raw eggs and Worcestershire in the morning; but he was definitely tending to be talkative, and in return for shushing him several times on the way, Lindsay sat and let him ramble for a bit once they got there. Seemed a Girtie he'd been pursuing had handed him the mitten. Bad luck, of course, although it would save him quite a lot of shoe leather not having to go out there to see her. On the other hand, possibly Caius to Girton and back was a good training run. Hard to say, really.

When Lindsay mentioned that he'd never cared for women -- which wasn't precisely true, he hurried to add; they were lovely creatures, it was just that he didn't like them in _that way_ \-- it was merely by way of explaining why he had actually never needed to worry about what they were thinking of him. It had been several weeks since he'd thought speculatively about Harold, and he certainly hadn't come up here tonight with any idea of trying anything funny. Still, when the man himself cocked his head and gave one a slightly wobbly smile, and then pushed one's hair out of one's eyes and kissed one on the mouth, what was one to do?

Harold was only very slightly clumsy, and Lindsay was prepared to bet that was due to the effects of drink; in the main, he was really very, very good, and the evening was outstanding. But after Harold laid his sleeping head on his arm, Lindsay lay awake for a long while, looking at the window.

* * *

For the next, oh, couple of years, they kept to the same sort of habit. Normally, they were -- well, normal. Harold saw women sometimes; Lindsay never did, but to comments on that he was ready to reply with a great sigh about what a bore it was when what they were really interested in was one's title. Nobody would have suspected that on occasion, when neither of them was seeing anyone and they didn't have a race to train for, Harold would come to Lindsay in the night, and they --

Certainly Aubrey Montague was Harold's best friend. They'd met on the train coming up, or at the station, or some such thing, and had been fast friends, so to speak, ever since. But even Monty didn't know what Lindsay knew, which was that Harold's collarbone was so sensitive you could make him gasp and stammer just by breathing on it. Harold's beard grew faster than Lindsay's, and sometimes in the morning he'd rub his chin on the inside of Lindsay's elbow, or on his ribs, to leave a mark that nobody would see. His chest was smooth and hard, like a statue in marble, but only Lindsay knew how very warm it was really. Only Lindsay knew how Harold's hip had a divot in it that was just the right size for his hand. Only Lindsay knew what the skin there tasted like. Lindsay was the only one who could hear the sounds Harold made when he touched him -- and only Lindsay had that particular bit of corroborative evidence that Harold was Jewish. And nobody else knew the look on Harold's face when everything was right and he relaxed, when his eyes widened and his jaw finally unclenched. That was normally just before he drifted to sleep.

Lindsay was the only one who knew what he knew; so he was even more surprised than the others at the Savoy, when Harold went in the interval to invite Sybil Gordon to dinner. That is, everyone was surprised by how smitten Harold was, and how quickly; only Lindsay was surprised by how much he minded. Why should it matter to him if Harold took a woman to dinner? It had never mattered before. But Harold had never got quite that look on his face before. Lindsay listened to Monty's news with incredulity that he only hoped looked relatively disinterested and, if necessary, sympathetic: 'He's only just laid eyes on her,' Monty sulked. 'I've worshipped her for years.'

And then Harold was back. 'Mine, I take it?' he said, taking the champagne glass out of Monty's hand. They all looked at him, but he volunteered nothing. They all continued to look at him -- Monty with a pout, Stallard with a smile, and Lindsay and whatshisname, the G&amp;S Soc chap, with raised eyebrows. Harold lifted his glass a bit. 'Excellent,' he nodded.

Lindsay and Stallard exchanged a glance. 'Well?' Lindsay said.

'Well what?'

Was Harold actually trying to be coy? 'Is she coming?'

Harold looked gravely around at them. 'Yes.'

'To dinner?!'

'Yes.' Harold finally smiled a bit. 'She's got a kid brother, athletics-mad, never stops talking about me, she says.' And now he grinned, but quickly sobered enough to apologise to Monty.

Poor Monty was reeling. Lindsay suspected he was taking it just as hard himself, but naturally he couldn't show it; Harold caught his eye, though, and for a fraction of a second he could see that when Harold said, 'Sorry, Monty', he also meant, I'm sorry, Andy.

* * *

The longer Harold was with Sybil, the clearer it was to Lindsay that everything was different now. His midnight visits were less and less frequent, and he was less talkative when he did come round. Lindsay didn't suppose Harold was spending nights in Sybil's arms, but he was sure it was now Sybil who heard him wax on about being Jewish and how wretched one sometimes felt when one was different from everyone else.

Lindsay himself was useless in that conversation. It wasn't that he didn't see how being Jewish could give Harold a bit of bother now and then, fitting in; but he had once made the mistake of saying, 'I know how you feel', and had then been subjected to a medium-length list of reasons he couldn't possibly. 'But listen', he'd tried to point out, 'haven't you noticed that I'm not like other chaps? One finds more sympathy for Jews than for lovers of men, doesn't one?'

Harold had scoffed at that. 'Don't be ridiculous.'

'I'm not.' Lindsay had pushed himself up on one elbow and dragged his hair out of his eyes. 'You're so defensive about being Jewish that you almost wield it like a bat. Surely you can't be suggesting that I could do anything of the kind.'

'No', Harold conceded, 'but why would you try if you hadn't got to? I'm easy to spot and easy to act against, but in your life, have you ever been denied anything?'

In point of fact Lindsay had, but not in the deliberate way Harold meant, because people didn't know he was how he was the way they knew Harold was Jewish. In any event, Harold didn't bring it up anymore, and Lindsay was sure he turned for that comfort to Sybil now instead.

* * *

Which was just the start of it, really. As the weeks and then the months passed, Harold turned more and more to Sybil and away, Lindsay saw, from him as well as from Stallard and even from Monty. It wasn't that the four of them weren't friends, naturally, and teammates -- of course when it came to that, Harold had hired himself a coach, hadn't he, and when he was out having old Sam put him through his paces, it was Sybil and not any of the rest of them who went along to support him. That aside, though, they were friends and teammates, but nobody could have said they were as close as they ever were, when Harold relied more and more on Syb for moral support rather than any of them, who after all were also runners.

The moment of no return, as Lindsay thought of it in his more self-pitying moods, was the meet in London when Eric Liddell beat Harold in the hundred metres. Only Sybil had got through to Harold afterward. In fact only Sybil had tried. Liddell had been very gracious after the race -- he didn't seem able to be any other way -- but Harold wasn't at his most receptive. When Sybil had decided to go after him, Lindsay knew there was a decent chance she'd succeed where he or Monty would have been bound to fail; when they finally emerged together from the stadium, arm in arm, he knew he wasn't wrong to feel that something awfully final had begun. He wished he didn't wish it hadn't.

* * *

* * *

He tries to make Sybil see how the pressure Harold is feeling in the last weeks before the Olympic Games is of a degree unknown to any of the rest of them. She understands Harold and his frankly obsessive need to win, of course, but he doesn't think she quite understands the hundred metres. He tells her she must allow Harold to clear his mind of her, or whatever he needs -- and she must hope like hell that he wins. He tells her Harold is a damned fool, and knows she only half understands what he means by it.

And then he puts her in the car and has John take her back to the Savoy, and Mildred brings him his spikes, and as he's limbering up for his next run at the hurdles, he takes a deep breath and clears his mind of Harold.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so glad there are people who love this movie at least nearly as much as I do, is all. :-) Note, though, that I was four thousand miles from my DVD of it when I wrote this fic, so if movie-dialogue isn't quite right (does Sybil say "I'm losing him" or "I've lost him"?), the error is entirely mine.
> 
> What turned out to be the hardest was actually not the Lindsay voice (I just thought to myself, Bertie Wooster, only smarter) -- it was the Cambridge-ness of the whole thing. It's hard for an Oxonian to make herself talk like a Tab. Hee!


End file.
